Song Chang-geun

Life

Song was born in 1898 in Gyeongheung County, North Hamgyong Province. He grew up in a family that had embraced enlightenment thought and Christianity early on. After attending the Bugil School, which his father had founded in their hometown, he studied at the Myeongdong School in Jiandao (Gando). During this period he met the independence activist Yi Dong-hwi, who taught him and reportedly urged him to become a minister in order to awaken the nation. He later served as a helper (evangelist) under the Rev. Ham Tae-young at Namdaemun Church in Seoul and graduated from the Pierson Memorial Bible Institute.

In 1922 he went to Japan to study in the theological department of Aoyama Gakuin. In 1927 he entered Princeton Theological Seminary in the United States, where he studied alongside Han Kyung-chik and Kim Chai-choon. He went on to earn a Master of Theology degree at Western Theological Seminary and, in 1931, a Doctor of Theology degree at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver. He returned to Korea in January 1932 and is regarded as the first Korean churchman to return home with a doctorate in theology earned abroad.

In August 1950, during the Korean War, he was abducted to North Korea, and nothing further was heard of him. Some accounts hold that he died in 1951, but this has not been confirmed.

Ministry and Achievements

• Ministry at Sanjeonghyeon Church: In April 1932 he took up a post as helper at Sanjeonghyeon Church in Pyongyang. Because he was not a graduate of Pyongyang Theological Seminary, he was initially unable to serve there as a minister. In 1933 he became moderator of the session (the minister who presides over the church's session), but his progressive theological stance brought him into conflict with the church. A particular point of contention was his participation in writing a one-volume Bible commentary edited by Ryu Hyeong-gi in 1935, which was criticized for denying biblical inerrancy. Song resigned from the church in April 1936, and Ju Gi-cheol subsequently succeeded him.
• Seongbin Haksa: Moving to Busan, he founded Seongbin Haksa, a community devoted to practicing the ideal of seongbin (聖貧, "holy poverty"). There he cared for the poor. He is also known to have admired St. Francis of Assisi.
• Suyang Dongu Society Incident: In October 1937 he was arrested and imprisoned in connection with the Suyang Dongu Society Incident, which involved a nationalist organization affiliated with the Heungsadan.
• Founding of Chosun Theological Seminary: When Pyongyang Theological Seminary closed in 1939 over the issue of Shinto shrine worship, he organized a committee to establish Chosun Theological Institute as its replacement and served as its general secretary. He later handed this work over to Kim Chai-choon and, beginning in 1940, served as pastor of Hwanggeum-dong Church in Gimcheon. After Korea's liberation, he pastored St. Paul's Church in Seoul (now Seoul Seongnam Church). He also served as president of Chosun Theological Seminary, leading the school until shortly before his abduction.

Influence on the Korean Church

Song is credited, together with Kim Chai-choon, with laying the foundation for progressive theology within Korean Presbyterianism through the founding of Chosun Theological Seminary, which became today's Hanshin University. After his abduction, the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea (PROK) was formed with this school at its center. The PROK honors him, along with Ham Tae-young and Kim Chai-choon, as one of the forebears who formed the roots of the denomination. Hanshin University has a Manu Song Chang-geun Memorial Hall, and the Manu Memorial Society conducts research on his life and thought.

Assessment

Supporters regard him as a practitioner of "national ministry" who united theological education with the enlightenment of the Korean people. They also esteem him as a pastor who stood alongside the poor. The Korean Christian Martyrs' Memorial in Yongin has designated him a martyr.

He has also been criticized, however, for cooperating with the Japanese colonial government's imperialization (kōminka) policy during the Pacific War. During this period he served as chairman of the board of the Gyeongbuk Presbytery League of the Korean Presbyterian Church under the National Total Mobilization movement and was also active in the Korean Branch of the United Church of Christ in Japan. For this reason his name was included in a dictionary documenting pro-Japanese collaborators. In addition, conservative Presbyterians in Pyongyang criticized his theology in the 1930s as "New Theology." Assessments of him continue to differ according to theological perspective.